August 21, 2010

"What if he were a Muslim? What if he were an atheist? Why should that matter? And let’s not forget that some of the same critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim criticized him for going to a Christian church where prayed for 20 years, got married, and baptized his children.”

1. Who are the critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim? The poll just said 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That doesn't mean they "insist" that he is or that they are "critics." Isn't it funny when commentator puzzling over how Americans can believe such things displays his own propensity to leap to conclusions beyond what the evidence supports?

2. It would matter if Obama is really a Muslim or an atheist, because it would mean that he'd lied about religion — for political advantage. If you want to find out more generally whether Americans are willing to accept non-Christian candidates, show me how they respond to a candidate who doesn't purport to be a Christian. The candidate's fear of discrimination — if that's what happened — isn't fairly used to tar Americans as intolerant.

3. There's nothing inconsistent with thinking Obama is a Muslim and criticizing him for going to a Christian church for 20 years. The criticism about the church had to do with the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, which offended and outraged a lot of people during the 2008 campaign. Obama himself chose to denounce him and separate himself from Wright's church (Trinity).

4. Does Obama's past association with Trinity Church prove that he was (and is) a Christian? My source is "Dreams from My Father," chapter 14. While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.

94 comments:

Polls don't tell you what people think. Polls tell you what they were willing to tell the pollster. I believe that it's an indication of the health of the republic that people are willing - even anxious - to lie to pollsters. A country where everyone feels obligated to tell pollsters the truth is ripe for tyranny.

So a bunch of people who hate Obama will tell pollsters they think he is a Muslim and a another bunch will tell pollsters they think Bush was in on 9/11. No doubt there is a bunch that will tell them they are joint heads of a child pornography ring.

The only real lesson is that people who take polls very seriously are fools.

In a July 21, 2008 Newsweek article, Obama explained that he stopped going to church as often after he and wife Michelle had children.

“As young marrieds, Barack and Michelle (who also didn't go to church regularly as a child) went to church fairly often—two or three times a month. But after their first child, Malia, was born, they found making the effort more difficult. ‘I don't know if you've had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it's not easy,’ he says.

“‘Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at—it just was difficult. So that would cut back on our involvement.’

“After he began his run for the U.S. Senate, he says, the family sometimes didn't go to Trinity for months at a time. The girls have not attended Sunday school.”

I actually agree with everything in this post. I'd add that I think it also should matter if he were a Muslim, not only if it was evidence that he had lied, but because one's religion is, especially in the U.S. and certainly with respect to Obama, a reflection of one's worldview, which I think is quite relevant to judging the de facto leader of the free world.

That said, Obama is obviously not Muslim. I assume that Obama is similar to a large, quiet minority of the U.S. population in that he identifies as Christian, appreciates Christianity and its history and lessons, but is not dogmatic, maybe feels somewhat agnostic if pushed, and mostly is affiliated with a church for reasons that aren't particularly inspiring (social opportunities, family obligations, mindless habit, appreciation of the ritual/aesthetic, political/business networking, etc.)

I've stopped asking Obama voters/supporters if they've read either of his books. I think that half the people (a good chunk of whom were Profs at an HBCU) I expected to be able to give me chapter and verse had never read a page. Another 25-40% gave vague indications that they might've once read something he wrote, and the rest were true believers who had read the books. They generally tried to tell me that they were the musings of a brilliant philosopher, not really political. (Having suffered them both, I know that they're both watery preographies of a narcissist.)

His actions speak of a man without a firm Christian faith but a very politically motivated set of priorities. He perhaps calls himself a Christian, but has he ever said he had experienced risen Christ, felt indwelled with the Holy Spirit. Too bad, if not, that's the really great thing about being a Christian.

Islam is Obama's home team. He grew up as a muslin in Indonesia. I doubt he believes in the religion but by default will defend it and support it. How else do you end up hiring the guy to head nasa and tell him that his job is to make Muslims feel good about their contributions to science?

I think Bush had to overcome a certain amount of antipathy to preach tolerance for Muslims. That's what made his sermons credible and useful. Obama feels no such antipathy. I'm sure that he feels more antipathy to bitter clingers in PA than he does towards Islamic militants. That's what makes his sermons suspect....I don't think that he is a Muslim in any formal sense. Neither is the Rev. Wright. But I think the Rev. Wright feels more areas of agreement with Minister Farrakhan than with the Pope or the Lutheran Synod or the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is much easier for people like Obama to figure that the anti-mosque crowd are bigots than that the pro-mosque people are triumphalists....You can characterize my distrust of Obama as a form of bigotry. But how would you characterize the distrust of the American left towards the American people?

My problem with President Obama is that he is a liberal. And not the classical liberal type, but the "Meathead"* idiotic liberal type.

And all his poor choices and policies flow from that spring of failure.

* ironic that Norman Mailer, in his quest to satire Archie Bunker, created the perfect character of liberalism in the form of Meathead. Rob Reiner was so affected by the role it completely possessed him.

I'll be more impressed when Colmes and other lefties start asking that question and preaching tolerance when it comes to the religion of Sarah Palin and other conservative/fundamentalist Christian sects (few of which are as conservative/fundamentalist as much of Islam).

But, it's all about trying to make Obama look good, not honest discussion.

Placing faith in wealth and power is not illegal. And placing trust in Nicene Creed's supernatural Christian faith is not illegal either. There is a lot of both of these folks mixed together in most successful Churches. The biggest worry for believers in a church group is those in the group with an easy added belief that God permits chosen ones, like them, to rob other people that are not alert for liars dressed up as believers. That is why knowing whether a leader has a faith ,and which type of faith, is of great interest. (Skeptics are seldom a threat to anyone). The best test is not smoothness and attendance, but it is their attitude towards God's word. Do you Remember General Patton's Episcopalian faith which included scripture reading " Every God Damned day." That was profane and not smooth, but it was evidence of a real faith.

The Zero only believes in the wonderfulness of himself and maybe Uncle Saul. He will have no other Messiahs before him.

He is an apostate Moslem; he practiced Islam in Indonesia - how devoutly is up for grabs.

His Christianity is no different from all the other people who go to church solely for the business contacts. Of course, going to hear Rev Wright fit right in with what he'd been taught at home.

HDHouse said...

Let's put on our thinking caps here. Has Obama put forth that he is a Muslim? Nope.

He also promised to protect and defend the Constitution.

Has the democratic party put it out there that he is a muslim or a secret muslim? Nope.

Well, there was that question in one of the primary debates.

Gosh. Who does that leave? I guess some group must have started that rumor and just kept it up. Might actually be some of the same ones who started rumors about his citizenship. can that be?

Maybe it was the people who noticed that he practiced Islam for several years.

I suspect that if we found a group who hates and dispises Muslims and thinks that calling someone a Muslim is a smeer...well my guess is that you found the culprits.

Maybe it's just people who love their country, realize it's at war with radical Islam, hate seeing it destroyed from within, and are a little concerned that the person elected POTUS is a radical, raised Moslem, and despises the United States.

Technically, if you profess that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet, that in itself makes you Muslim. Others would say that a male child born to a Muslim father is ipso facto Muslim.

It would seem then that it is part profession of faith, as in Christianity (but which would also include baptism), and is also partly a matter of birth/culture, as in Judaism.

And many Muslims would insist that, once a Muslim, always a Muslim (again, as is the case with both a baptized-Christian and a Jew).

Barack Obama was born into a Muslim family and was instructed and raised in Islam for much of his early life. That would mean that Obama, as a little boy, was Muslim.

That would also mean that, if he is not now Muslim, that he is instead a Christian, or a Christianized agnostic, then he is an apostate from Islam. Apostasy in Islam is a capital offense.

HD House, Since you have no idea about the subject other than you own well established ignorance and intolerance, I'll take your comment for what its worth-- nothing. You really have no value here. You're not original, funny, interesting or thought provoking, but rather, just tiresome.

HD House: How do you explain Obama's statement, out of his own mouth, that was corrected by George Stephanopolis? I believe he uttered the phrase "my Muslim faith" before George leapt the the rescue. Now I personally believe he is a Christian because I have no reason to doubt him, but do you not find it odd that such a statement spilled from his lips? Passingly odd? Have you ever misstated your religion? Race?

Obama is whatever is currently convenient. He has spoken for and against single payer health care, for and against taxes for certain segments of the population and so on. Attending Wright's church was a political move. I agree with others who guess he is agnostic but that would not be a convenient position for him.

The issue of secret Muslims (or Jews) is an interesting historical fact. The matter of Muslims being false conversos or the Jews that collaborated with Muslims in order to stay in Iberia or the Holy Land.

As was the existence of secret Christians in Roman times, or under Muslim occupation. There are people outside religious ideology that kept their membership in subversive or revolutionary groups secret.

Muslims even are allowed to lie and appear Christian to penetrate enemy ranks. They made Taqqiyah part of their Faith. The Byzantines fought this.

Nothing of course indicates Obama is a Taqqiyah practitioner. But he was born to a Muslim father then was raised and attended Mosque for several years as stepson of another Muslim. In later years he claims he was brought into Christianity well into his adulthood, almost two decades after leaving Indonesia...because Rev Wright's church was a good place to do community organizing and "legitimate" himself as a black politician from . (At the time, the followers of Prophet Elijah in the Black Muslims were interested in behind the scenes influencing but telling members to avoid being in politics themselves. Had the Black Muslims been more active, if they controlled candidates selected in S Side Chicago and were sponsoring members to the Dayley Machine...maybe Obama's conversion would have gone a separate path.)

There are also his actions. Calling middle America bitter people clinging to their (Christian faith) and guns. NO Christmas goings on at the White House. Kids don't go to Sunday school, Obamas don't attend CHurch. While he does his apology tour to Islam for the Crusades, not doing enough giving of US wealth to Muslim countries, for being hard on captured terrorists and not as heedful of terrorist rights as we should be.Immediately denying that Islam had anything to do with the "troubled men" like the Christmas bomber, Major Hasan, the Times Square bomber.Out saying building a Mosque near the WTC Pit is a wonderful thing because it is legal. And Muslims will love us if all just shut up and not criticize anything Muslims have a technically legal right to do.

No, I can see why people wonder. And this one is a lot more plausible, and has a lot more non-kook people saying it than the Chem Trailers, Birthers, 9/11 was in inside job!! whackos.

If Barack Obama is a Muslim who has been practicing Taqiyya in order to be elected, this would be not only a gross violation of our trust but also the biggest story of the last 234 years of American history. A member of a group, many adherents of which have openly declared war on this country, has lied about his true beliefs in order to get into office.

I don't think Obama is a Muslim yet I don't think he's a traditional Christian either. He joined the only church that someone like Barack Obama could.

Btw, Alan Colmes is a worthless hack. If anyone to the right of Evan Bayh does anything that Howard Dean doesn't agree with, Colmes is there to rationalize it.

If I had 5 extra minutes, I could find a dozen instances of leftists like Colmes explicitly denouncing people for being too Christian or too religious or whatever. So clearly religion matters. Except when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama.

1) It matters, politically, because - like the oil spill was a do-over of Katrina - liberals lied about W being a right-wing born again nutjob. They can't keep complaining that it doesn't matter, or it's unfair, once their own standards are applied to Leftists.

2) Obama is a NewAger and his multiple associations with Oprah Winfrey (AKA the "icon of church-free spirituality") are but one piece of evidence of it. I'll be writing about this later.

But the key take-away in my (atheist) mind is that he can't be a practicing Christian and skip church on Christmas can he? I mean, not unless he's dying or something, right? It's not like he and Michelle can't afford babysitters.

I don't know that that's bad -- one can be an atheist and still be an honest and upright man. Or at least I hope I can be described as honest and upright. But if some people saw Obama's 20-year attendance at Trinity as meaning that he was a solid, practicing Christian then I suspect they're being disabused.

Whether that accounts for some large fraction of the putative 20% is at this point unanswerable.

It does matter if Obama is a Muslim. Being a Muslim is not being a Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish or Baptist. Being Muslim is a departure from understanding and acceptance of others. Most offensive is that he plays the issue. On the issue of religion alone Obama has shown he is not trustworthy, thus not acceptable as a president. It is not a sad commentary that his religion should be stated (or questioned), it is a sad commentary that he can't thus he is questioned.

Big Mike, an old neighbor was a devout Christian. Church twice on Sundays and every Wednesday night and he could pray the varnish off the dining room table. But on Christmas, he was home...unless it fell on a Sunday or Wednesday. He said the Bible doesn't tell us when Christmas is, so we shouldn't celebrate it. Or something like that. I didn't ask a lot of questions about it...because sanctimonious pricks aren't much fun to talk to.

This story isn't meant to explain anything about Obama, just to respond to your post about Christmas.

he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.

Right. Because what good is religion if it actually has any relevance to concepts of justice, morality, charity, proper action, and ultimately the lives of people right here, right now, living on Planet Earth?

This just also in: Obama and New Age people also have 46 chromosomes, tend to be idealistic, speak English, and live in America. Now some might say that's all just a coincidence, but I'm hoping Crack'll give me the conspiracy theory angle to it.

* Dr. Wright is a student of the history of religions. His master’s degree from the University of Chicago is in that discipline and his area of concentration as an historian of religions was Islam in West Africa. While a student at the University of Chicago (U of C) he studied with the esteemed Islamic professor, Dr. Fazlur Rahman.* Dr. Wright’s Master’s thesis at the Divinity School of the U of C was the Tijaniyya among the Bambara, the Fulbe and the Tuckolour. The Tijaniyya was a 19th Century Sufi movement (a sect of Sufism) which swept into West Africa during the period of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.* In 1984, Rev. Dr. Wright was invited to join an interfaith delegation to visit Libya in celebration of its 15th Jamahiriya. He did so. He did not meet with, nor has he ever met with President Kadaffi, and he had to leave the delegation a week early to satisfy other family commitments.

Did you not realize that in your purge of J. Wright, nothing in the descriptive "talking points" you quote even mentions "taqiyyah"? Perhaps you confused that word with another word in the quote: "Tijaniyya".

Ok Sahaf. Now you're talking. That guy was hilarious. He lied almost as pathologically as some on the right do. Nothing to say religion had anything to do with it - in either one of those cases. Moreover, he wasn't lying about anything having to do with fear of religious persecution.

Dude. You've been fisked. Twice. In short order. Shorter than that close-cropped hair-do. It's nothing to get personal about at this point. I just hate people lying or peddling willful ignorance to further a lame political point.

Get a clue, Penny. The people worth connecting with are the ones who aren't interested in lying or willfully peddling ignorant bullshit. The ones how are - I enjoy calling them out. I don't enjoy what they do.

I apologize if it's difficult for you to "connect" with the idea of accuracy being a worthy standard when it comes to characterizing what people sincerely believe.

"Obama and New Age people also have 46 chromosomes, tend to be idealistic, speak English, and live in America. Now some might say that's all just a coincidence, but I'm hoping Crack'll give me the conspiracy theory angle to it."

Ahh, so it's just a coincidence ALL OF HIS POLICIES jibe with NewAge?

And it's just a coincidence his most significant spiritual relationship is with Oprah - not the Islam everybody's so obsessed with? That she knew him before he ran, they both left Trinity, she fundraised for him at her house, stumped with him, spent his birthday with him, and every major NewAger (many of whom are connected to Her Highness) supports him?

I don't think you even understand the meaning of the word coincidence. Or even conspiracy theories - Tell me:

What could be conspiratorial about thinking Leftists accept the dominant spiritual belief of the Left?

Alpha: Why and how did Obama "slip up" and use the phrase "my Muslim faith" in a nationally broadcast interview with George Stephanopolis? I am sure he is a Christian, but what possible explanation could you or anyone give to that faux pas? Because he is, after all, the smartest, best, most well educated President ever. How could he have made such a slip?

But don't you find it suspicious that he attended Punahou School in Hawaii -- founded by Congregationalist (that is Puritan) missionaries from New England -- and then joined Trinity United Church of Christ -- the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ (that is, the merged Congregationalists and Reformed churches).

So he's clearly a Puritan.

Of course since the Puritans lacked the control provided by the Magisterium, they got a bit frisky and created both the Unitarians and the UCC which are the two most liberal mainline Protestant denominations. For both of these denominations, belief in God is optional so I guess atheism is a definite possibility for Barry which means he's lying, of course.

Dad and mom and grampa and gramma were godless atheistic communists themselves so atheism is probably the way to bet.

Barry shows some signs of risk of future conversion to Islam, however.

In his own words from his book, the president makes it extremely clear where his loyalties lie! “ Quote from Obama’s book: Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction..'"

The man's religion aside, his loyalties are clear and they are in fact extremely pro Muslim. Or could it be that as in his entire presidency so far, his own words in his own book are also just a bald faced lie?